Do U.S. consumers boycott products in response to international conflict? Two professors at the University of Virginia say that in the case of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the answer is "yes." Remember "freedom fries?" A brief refresher: As the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush was gearing up to wipe out what it called Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction," tensions were rising in the U.N. Security Council. France was deeply opposed to an attack and threatened to use its veto power to stop the action.
In the U.S., sentiment toward Paris plummeted, particularly among conservative Americans. Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly announced on the air he was boycotting French products and Capitol Hill cafeterias famously renamed French fries as "freedom fries," in an edible admonishment of the French government.
So talk of boycotts was in the air. But, as noted in a forthcoming paper in the journal Review of Economics and Statistics, measuring their economic impact has been a slippery affair.
"Most studies infer boycott behavior from indirect measures, such as bilateral trade patterns, abnormal stock market returns or consumer surveys, which are typically inconsistent with actual behavior," write associate professor of politics Sonal Pandya and business professor Rajkumar Venkatesan in their study, "French Roast: Consumer Response to International Conflict; Evidence from Supermarket Scanner Data."
It occurred to Pandya that supermarket scanners might offer some firm data on Americans' buying habits, so she and Venkatesan decided to dig deeper, studying weekly sales in 1,110 U.S. supermarkets in 50 regions across the country. For every week in 2003 they compared each store's sales of French-sounding brands to that same week in 2002. "Consumers' often use supermarket brands as an expression of their identity to others and also themselves," Venkatesan said.
[Paper]: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/REST_a_00526#.VUEShvBOKSp
[Source]: https://news.virginia.edu/content/study-tracks-us-boycott-french-sounding-products-during-2003-iraq-war
(Score: 2) by tibman on Saturday May 02 2015, @03:46PM
I remember a completely different reason. Saddam bought a shitload of weapons from France on credit. France refused to consent or help the "coalition" invade Iraq because a dead Saddam would be a huge loss for them. That was why people were boycotting French stuff. If i am remembering correctly : )
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(Score: 4, Informative) by janrinok on Saturday May 02 2015, @05:29PM
The French Air Force were in the first few aircraft to attack Iraq, although they took a little persuading to do so.
Iraq had the recently-purchased Crotale SHORAD missile system from France and, initially, France refused to give the necessary classified war-only parameters for the system to other members of the coalition. They felt it would compromise their ability to sell the system to other countries. This meant that the coalition Electronic Warfare (EW) would be working a little on guess-work and would not be able to program automated jamming pods to respond with maximum effectiveness. The solution was to put the French aircraft in the first wave to ensure that the Crotale system would be targeting the French before anyone else, and to give the coalition time to collect the EW data in order to program their own pods. The French were not keen on this idea - although they did not refuse (as I'm sure someone will try to suggest) - but, after political pressure, they eventually delivered the wanted data in sufficient time for the entire coalition to make use of it. They still took part in the first day of air action.
Of course, the entire gesture was more a way of showing the French that they were either part of the coalition or not, and that business interests would have to come second. Most jamming pods can cope without knowing every parameter of potential threat radars unless the war-only modes are considerably different to those in normal everyday usage.
An additional problem that the first Gulf War presented was that the west had spent years collecting data on the old soviet/Russian-designed radars that were (and still are) in common usage in the Middle East, but had not had to face western designed equipment in any major combat operations prior to this war. (The main exception to this was the UK during the Falklands Conflict.) Tactics had been devised, tested, modified, re-tested and eventually taught to western forces which would, in some degree or other, need changing again for use against our 'own' systems. There were some problems but, in the main, the level of training and our equipment proved good enough for the task.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @10:06PM
The US State Department has its own band of spys and analysts.
They told Secretary of State Colin Powell that the Dubya/Cheney folks were lying about WMD but Powell [google.com] stuck with the party line and spouted the warmongers' bullshit to the UN.
The French also had better spooks and analysts and they also got the answer right.
Trusting their own guys, they chose to ignore the USAian ideologs.
-- gewg_
(Score: 4, Informative) by tibman on Sunday May 03 2015, @12:33AM
I was so disappointed in Gen Powell over that. It just seemed so against his character and was unforgivable. That guy could have run for president if he would have done things a little bit different.
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